Derek C. Blasberg’s origin story is “pretty typical,” he says: “Small-town boy moves to the big city with dreams and stars in his eyes.” Born and raised in St. Louis, the 44-year-old decamped to Manhattan in 2000 to attend New York University and was instantly fascinated by the fashion world. He began his career as an intern at W and at Vogue, then quickly became a man-about-town, as likely to write about the best parties as he was to attend them. Since then, Blasberg has enjoyed many careers, from New York Times best-selling author to YouTube’s first-ever head of fashion and beauty.
These days, he juggles a few jobs: He’s a senior director at Gagosian, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair , a columnist for Harper’s Bazaar , and a Substacker. In July, he published Fast + Louche , a collection of Interview magazine nightlife columns he wrote from 2009 to 2012. With his point-and-shoot camera, he captured everyone from Phoebe Philo at the CFDA Awards to Nicole Richie at Mr. Chow for the column. “I still get giddy when I get invited to any of these fancy parties,” he says. “Honestly, sometimes I also still get nervous, because there’s a little part of me waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Excuse me, sir, you’re not supposed to be here.’”
With hundreds of soirées under his belt, Blasberg has theories on what makes one work. “A great party needs three things: people you love, people you don’t know, and at least one person you probably shouldn’t be talking to,” he says. Ultimately, “the best, most memorable nights of my life were the spontaneous ones. I’ve been lucky enough to go to some of the most fabulous places with some of the most fabulous people—but you can’t manufacture a great night. You can plan a party down to the flowers and the seating chart, but you can’t plan the magic. That’s the whole point.”
Top: Two-year-old Blasberg sleeping at his family’s kitchen table.
Top: Two-year-old Blasberg is pictured sleeping at his family’s kitchen table. “I’ve lived in New York for longer than I lived in Missouri, but I still identify as this Midwest kid trying to make it in the big city,” Blasberg explains. “So many of my core memories are vividly suburban: riding bikes around the neighborhood and never locking them, a social life that revolved around the mall. Of course, I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there, but the older I get, the more I cherish those memories. That’s probably why I’ve always maintained a little bit of an outsider’s perspective on this industry.” Bottom: He’s pictured celebrating his third birthday at McDonald’s, an event with Happy Meals, paper crowns, and a giant chocolate chip cookie cake. “For a 3-year-old in suburban America, it was as glamorous as you could get.”
Blasberg (bottom left) in 1985 with his brother, Chris (behind Blasberg), and the children of his mother’s Beta Sigma Phi sorority sisters at a party on the Lake of the Ozarks, or “the Hamptons of the Midwest,” as he calls it. Blasberg still returns to the lake every summer, for “long days on the water, waterskiing, tubing, and sunburns.”
Blasberg with his friend Maja Heyduk at their senior-year homecoming, themed “One Moment in Time.” Blasberg rented a tuxedo from Desmond’s, at Crestwood Plaza mall, and the dance was held in the high school gym, which was decorated by the student council. “It was all very sweet and small-town and homemade. At the time, it felt like the biggest night in the world.” He loved his vinyl black and white rental shoes so much that he begged the girl at the shop to let him keep them. “I still have them, of course.”
Top : Blasberg with his high school best friends, Maria Zemen (left) and Heyduk, in Zemen’s childhood bedroom. Growing up in St. Louis, the trio shopped at thrift stores, put together “wildly avant-garde outfits,” and went on late-night picture-taking adventures. “We were basically proto-influencers—we just didn’t have anywhere to post the content.” Bottom : They’re at their high school graduation, in 2000. Blasberg had a perfect attendance record from kindergarten through senior year. “It made the local news. I was a huge overachiever in high school because I knew I’d have to pull every trick I had to chase my dreams.”
“I attended NYU in 2000, and it felt like my real life could officially begin. I finally met other gay men— I didn’t meet an openly gay person until I was 18—and found a community of people who were as obsessed with fashion and art as I was.” When he spent a year abroad in London, he “fell even deeper under fashion’s spell.” Above : His student ID from his time in Europe.
In 2006, models Lily Donaldson (left) and Gemma Ward brought Blasberg to a French Vogue party hosted at the Gramercy Park Hotel. He got in as a plus-one, “a role I happily fulfilled for most of my early 20s,” he explains. “What’s the opposite of a nepo baby? My dad was an accountant, and my mom worked for a medical journal—in Missouri. Tagging along with these girls gave me a front-row seat to this world I was still figuring out how to become a part of.”
In 2008, Blasberg went to Moscow with (from left) artist Olympia Scarry, socialite Eugenie Niarchos, gallerist Larry Gagosian, Zhukova, and activist Barbara Bush. They all attended “For What You Are About to Receive,” an exhibition the Gagosian gallery staged in a 28,000-square-foot Soviet-era chocolate factory. “Afterward, we drank approximately a zillion gallons of vodka,” recalls Blasberg, who met Gagosian socially years before working for him. “He continues to be a source of inspiration.”
In 2012, Blasberg and Emma Watson (below, right) attended a party in London thrown by Gucci celebrating Blasberg’s book Very Classy . It was an expanded edition of his first book, Classy , a collection of comedic essays about etiquette. Very Classy carried the unofficial tagline “Be a lady, not a tramp.” As he says, “Some of the etiquette advice has aged better than the tagline, which makes me cringe a little now.” Blasberg met Watson in 2008, when the actor attended her first fashion show—Chanel, no less. “I have to confess that I never read the Harry Potter books, and I still haven’t seen the films, but the fashion gods brought us together. I remember being completely bowled over by how clever and well-read this young woman was. She was a teenager reciting sonnets!”
“I love Celine Dion—who doesn’t?” In 2012, Blasberg flew to Las Vegas twice to see her residency. He recalls sitting in the audience and “thinking over and over again: This person was put on this planet to do this one thing.” Afterward, he visited her dressing room, “with its billowing white curtains and scented candles.” He sat there “enraptured as she morphed from pop diva into wonderfully kooky, completely unfiltered Celine.”
During Couture Week in 2013, Blasberg attended a dinner Valentino Garavani and his business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, hosted for Anna Wintour. The festivities were held at Château de Wideville, Valentino’s 17th-century estate outside of Paris. “Nobody did decadence quite like these two: beautiful rooms, beautiful tables, beautiful people, incredible food, and always a sense that the evening could go anywhere.”
From left: Miley Cyrus, Karen Elson, Emma Roberts, Karlie Kloss, Cara Delevingne, Rita Ora, and Blasberg at the 2013 Met Gala—one of the 15 or 16 he estimates he’s attended. The theme was “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” for which Blasberg had a makeup artist apply neck tattoos at the Carlyle hotel a few hours before. Blondie was performing when he snapped this picture, which may or may not be the first group selfie at the Met Gala. “This ould be my greatest contribution to fashion history. Put it on my tombstone!”
Blasberg with (from left) entrepreneur and podcaster Sara Foster, art collector Dasha Zhukova, Nicole Richie, and Naomi Campbell at an Oscars afterparty in 2016. “You have to understand that the Oscars were a national holiday in my house,” says Blasberg. “My parents would let me stay up late to watch them—but I’d record them on VHS anyway so I could watch them again. Yes, I was one of those kids. I still am, by the way.”
In 2019, Blasberg celebrated the Fourth of July in Paris at the house of Lauren Santo Domingo (third from left), along with (from left) his partner, Nick Brown; filmmaker Simon Kinberg; filmmaker Fabiola Beracasa Beckman; poet Cleo Wade; and actor Jessica Chastain. Blasberg met Santo Domingo when she was a market editor at Vogue and he was interning in the accessories closet during his senior year at NYU. “She was already one of the most glamorous women I’d ever met, a title she continues to hold.” Her Paris home, decorated by the late François Catroux, has been the site of countless soirées.
From left: Blasberg, Margherita Maccapani Missoni, Coco Brandolini d’Adda, Santo Domingo, Simmons, Kelly Sawyer, and Beracasa Beckman visiting Vistorta, the Brandolini family estate in Friuli, Italy, for Brandolini d’Adda’s 40th birthday, in 2019. The night featured a giant cake covered in tiny strawberries (Blasberg’s favorite food) and an outdoor disco that ran until the wee hours.
In 2021, Blasberg and a group of friends, including (from left) designer Lazaro Hernandez, editor Kristina O’Neill, fashion editor Katie Grand, stylist Tabitha Simmons, and designer Jack McCollough, stopped for a nightcap at the Carlyle hotel. Mariah Carey happened to pull up in a limo. “We watched her sort of wiggle out of the car and float into the hotel. Naturally, we followed.” O’Neill trailed her into the bathroom and persuaded her to sing. Minutes later, Carey was serenading the group. She requested to take this photo. “This was back when I carried a digital camera with me everywhere—for moments just like this one.”
Blasberg with Dua Lipa in 2021 at the afterparty for “Fendace,” when Versace’s and Fendi’s designers swapped houses for a collection shown in Milan: “Kate Moss on the runway! An afterparty in Gianni Versace’s old apartment on Via Gesù!” Later that night, a few stragglers gathered around a grand piano in a hotel lobby for an impromptu performance by Lipa.
Blasberg with Giammetti (center) and Valentino on the dance floor at Château de Wideville. As Blasberg recalls, whenever anyone complimented the designer on his style, he’d reply, “I love beauty; it’s not my fault.”
Blasberg with jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer (left) and actor Kate Hudson at their joint birthday party in 2023, held at Hudson’s home in the Pacific Palisades. The joint-party tradition began in 2015, when the three realized their birthdays fall within a week of one another’s: “Why not combine forces?”
In 2023, Blasberg co-curated “Avedon 100,” an exhibition at the Gagosian gallery marking the centennial of Richard Avedon’s birth. Above: He’s with Hillary Clinton in front of Avedon’s portrait of her. For the photo session, Clinton arrived in one of her trademark pantsuits. Avedon told her he’d seen enough pictures of her wearing that, so he handed her the sweater off his own back. When Clinton ran for president in 2016, Blasberg canvassed for her and joined her at New York’s Javits Center on election night. “That remains one of the saddest and most surreal nights I can remember. I’d gone there expecting to witness one kind of history, and instead witnessed another.”
Brown and Blasberg getting ready for the 2022 Met Gala with their twins, Noah and Grace, who were born in 2021. “Suddenly, I’d swapped popping bottles for baby bottles,” says Blasberg. “A very different kind of pregame. Becoming a father has been the greatest choice and most fulfilling ride of my life.”
Source: ShowBiz
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